inklings of thought

When Thomas briefly compares Growth Mindset's popularity to that of policies which stress "grit" and "no excuses," it instantly made me think of Angela Duckworth, a psychologist who recently published a book titled Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance . I actually purchased this book because I found it interesting how at the beginning she detailed her life growing up in her father's shadow; he was a man who sought brilliance and expected nothing less from her. This led her on a journey to figure out, scientifically, what "grit" is -- what enables certain individuals to go above and beyond for their goals, while others seemingly display no drive?  I never ended up finishing the book, but after reading Thomas' post I'm pulled back to the question of grit. How do you "curate" a characteristic in an individual? As he points out, an issue with these philosophies and approaches to poverty-stricken students is this: they plac...

As a self-described "hesitant" writer (at least according to the sentence stem exercise we did in class last Tuesday), and as somebody who is trying to start writing for herself again, Julia Cameron's words in our reading could not have been more timely: "Kabir tells us, 'Wherever you are is the entry point,' and this is always true with writing. Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are" (4-5). One of the greater concerns I have as a potential English teacher is passing on this hesitation of mine, which has kept me in check creatively since I graduated from URI in 2012. "Write -- but do it right," and the incessant need for perfection at first attempt, bars many from even considering writing as play. We are taught structure, that every paper must have a thesis, that there are unquestionable laws to ...